Taken for granted

The things that you take for granted always surprise you; because, well, you take them for granted. Gumball machines for example. When I was growing up they were everywhere. Every grocery store had them often a small bank of them. They also popped up anywhere that people had to wait. The Canadian Tire had one in the service department where the auto bays were the room smelling manly like grease and cigarette smoke. I remember dad giving me a nickel to get a shiny blue gumball while we got the winter tires put on the Austin one year. There was one at the KFC except they didn’t call it KFC in those days just Kentucky Fried Chicken.; the advertising gurus had not yet thought up that nugget. You could stare at the brightly colored gum while waiting for your order. The Koolex Cleaners had twinned ones that had peanuts in it; barbeque and regular.
I remember once when I had found a dime in the K-Mart parking lot. Not a bright shiny dime, but an old dirty one with sugar from cotton candy on it, that is why everyone else failed to see it. Now a dime was a lot of money back then. My allowance was a dime twice a week. One on Dad’s payday; for he was paid every week, and one on Saturday so I could go to the corner store after baseball or road hockey with my friends. So an extra dime was a fortune to me. Plus it was found money. Now your weekly allowance was like your weekly wages; hard earned money anticipated for days. You had spent it many times in your mind; imagining how good the Popsicle or bag of chips would taste. Your allowance had to be spent on something of substance. Maybe the tiny black licorice flavored jaw breakers that were three for a penny at Leo’s store. Never around the corner where the other store only gave you two. What a rip-off! Mint leaves were two for a penny. Mojos; the tiny ones were three for a penny too. A licorice pipe was two cents and was a special treat when you were really flush like when you had a quarter. Those were rare times.
We could raise extra money by combing the ditches for pop bottles. Two cents for a small one a whole nickel if you struck the mother lode of a quart bottle! But found money was a different thing altogether. You had carte blanche! You were free to spend it foolishly; even morally obligated to use it for something you would never normally buy, not with your own money anyways. When I looked up the filthy, sticky dime in my hand I saw them, shiny chrome; glass and red painted metal. A bank of maybe six gumball machines. But not just gumballs. There were toys. Toys in tiny cunning capsules small enough to fit through the chute with the chrome door that read “Thank You” on the front. I made a beeline for the machine before my Mom could get through the checkout. She would not approve; would not understand the moral imperative of spending found money foolishly. She had grown up in the depression and knew the value of a dime. I dropped to my knees in front of the capsule machine and stuck the filthy dime in the slot. The machine had a picture of its’ contents on a cardboard card. There were soldiers and cowboys, plastic cars a lucky token and a tiny baby bottle. I turned the mechanism and opened the door expecting my treat. At first nothing came out so I began to jiggle the knob. The door was supposed to be closed to allow the toy to slide down. I did not understand. I began to turn harder and the wheel began to spin I kept turning. Nothing! I was appalled. My face got hot and I dropped the “thank You” door. I heard a clink as the toy hit the door and I opened it and removed it; stuffing it in my pocket without a look. Then I heard the same sound. I opened the door and another capsule was sitting there. I stuffed it in my pocket too. This happened perhaps a dozen times my pockets bulged with the booty.
I stood up and my conscience smote me. I went into the entrance where a lady stood behind a dais stapling shoppers other bags as they entered to prevent shoplifting. I stood there politely waiting until she was free. “I think your machine is broken!” I said with as much authority as I could muster. “That one!” I said pointing. The store was busy and she had more adults waiting to have their packages stapled. “Thank you dear.” she said patting my head. “I will put a sign on it when I get a minute.” I was frustrated; I stuck a hand in my pocket to show her all the capsules full of God only knew what. Before I could protest I heard my Mother. “Come on your Father’s parked out front.” She wasn’t mad but she was serious so I slipped away from the smiling lady who was waving at me. I put my hands into my bulging pockets to hide the toys.
It was like I had won the lottery, if they had lotteries in those days. My best friend Jed was totally jealous. There was a car and a truck a plastic ball glove of leather colored plastic with a baseball on a beaded chain that was for keys. I shared the duplicates with Jed to buy his silence not that he would have ever squealed. We were in hog heaven. We filled the capsules with fine dust and threw them at each other like they were grenades. The puff of dust like a puff of smoke. We had hours of fun.
So when we got the first gumball machines in the store in Fox Lake I wasn’t ready for the reaction; even madness that ensued. When the salesman called we placed what we thought was a big order. The machine arrived on the winter road. We bundled it into the store and set it up right in front. It was huge! Six candy machines and four capsule machines. We filled them all. There were gumballs and jelly beans and hard candies. There were capsules with toys and rings and one mix which contained digital watches. This was the most popular. Our office was overwhelmed with kids wanting rolls of quarters and dimes. We had to empty the machines sometimes three times a day as we ran out of coins. We spent hours wrapping and counting coins. At the end of the first day our janitor swept the empty capsules into a pile and filled a garbage can with them using a snow shovel. You were wading through empty capsules ankle deep. I watched stunned as an elder kneeled in front of the machine and fed quarters in until he had the digital watch for his granddaughter; it was like watching someone play a VLT.
After school the first day the teachers came to the store en masse to see the phenomenon for themselves. All day they had heard the stories of the wonderful new machines. Even the Nuns had to see it for themselves. The whole town was talking about the life changing event. By the second day we knew that the six month supply of candy and capsules would be gone before the end of the week so we placed a much larger order. The six month supply was gone in three days! It took more than a week for the fresh supplies to come. I thought that the ardor would be gone by then but the initial taste and the sudden famine only whetted appetites for the craze. But when supply kept up to demand the demand eventually slowed. We enjoyed the ride but were secretly relieved when the machines took a back stage to normal retailing.
The first week we got phone calls from head office asking why sales were up so dramatically. Imagine their disbelief when we told them it was because of a gumball machine. Until they processed the invoices I still don’t think it sank in for them. But like the hula hoop and the Cabbage Patch kids this fad too subsided. Shortly before I moved a year later I heard a local youngster talking to a kid from nearby Garden River. “Oh wow! A gumball machine. When did you guys get that?” the out of towner asked. “Oh; that?” replied the homey. “We had that since I was a kid!” Like I said its funny the things you take for granted.